1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a droplet discharge device and to a droplet discharge method.
2. Related Art
Droplet discharge devices provided with a droplet discharge heat for discharging droplets of a liquid material are used not only in consumer applications such as inkjet printers, but also in industrial applications. Droplet discharge devices for industrial use are used for manufacturing organic EL devices, color shutters in liquid crystal display devices, and the like, and for forming metal interconnections and other conductor layers or insulation films on a substrate, for example.
Known droplet discharge devices include a device that uses a liquid material having photo-curing properties (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-358769, for example).
In the droplet discharge device according to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-358769, for example, an inkjet head for applying a UV-curable ink to print media, and a UV radiating unit for radiating UV to the ink applied on the print media are moved over the print media. The ink applied to the print media can thereby be cured by the UV.
However, in the droplet discharge device according to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-358769, since the inkjet head and the UV radiating unit are both provided above the print media, the movement of the UV radiating unit and the print media relative to each other is affected by the limitation of relative movement between the inkjet head and the print media.
It is therefore difficult to obtain the desired UV radiation time or UV radiation timing for the ink on the print media. For example, when the print speed is increased, the UV radiation time decreases, and the ink cannot be adequately cured.
Since air is also present near the surface of the ink to which the UV is radiated by the UV radiating unit, curing of the ink is hindered by oxygen in the air, and this also prevents the ink from being adequately cured.
When the ink cannot be adequately cured, and a long time is taken between landing of the ink on the print media and the time when the UV is radiated to the landed ink, the liquid material applied on the print media spreads out, and highly precise droplet discharge cannot be realized.